


All that's Left is Who We are Now

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and Raleigh and drifting without a Kaiju to take down. Bonus Newt and Hermann because, well, I like them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All that's Left is Who We are Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [templemarker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/gifts).



Days later, Newt finds Raleigh and Mako in the Jaeger bay. They've all been busy packing up and waiting for orders, and it's taken Newt a few days to stop dreaming about the Kaiju who still lives in his head a little. (Hermann informs him he's had no such issues, but Newt can tell he's lying by the way he presses his mouth to the left. One of these days, Newt's gonna kiss him when he does that and see just how much Hermann can lie when the truth is staring them both in the face.)

"Hey," Raleigh says when he sees Newt approach. "What's up?"

"Hi. Yeah. We're packing up the lab, me and Hermann, and we don't know what you two are up to after this because Hermann thinks you're gonna go your separate ways, but I don't really think pilots do that unless they really, really have to, and since you two don't really, really have to, I figure you're going the same way on purpose, so I thought you'd maybe want to have this."

And Newt drops the drift gear he and Hermann used with the Kaiju next to Raleigh's left hand. Raleigh looks confused. Mako smiles up at him and says, "Thank you, Newt." Then she gestures at the bag, waits for Raleigh to pick it up, and leads him away from the empty bay.

Newt goes back to the lab and informs Hermann that Raleigh and Mako are clearly going to go together wherever they go, and Hermann should apologize for desecrating the sacred bond between pilots.

"Oh, be quiet," Hermann says, and he kisses Newt, and that is completely unfair because Newt really was going to kiss him first, like, in a couple of days when things had really calmed down finally and they could just have some time to maybe talk about the whole in-the-head-of-a-Kaiju-and-wasn't-it-awesome-and-terrifying thing.

But Hermman keeps kissing him, and Newt can't really find a good time to interrupt and explain.

*

Mako leads Raleigh to her quarters. He follows without a word. He catches a couple of people giving them odd looks as they walk down the halls and knows whoever they are, they aren't full-time Shatterdome. Probably support staff flown in from non-Jaeger bases to help shut the place down. They think it's weird the two of them are going down the hall hand-in-hand, and it makes Raleigh think of Herc and Charlie, who occasionally went down piggy back, Charlie on his dad's back, not saying a word, but no one looking at them twice.

That's just how it is, Raleigh wants to stop and explain. The drift, it makes you closer, and the only way to show that sometimes is to hold hands or ride piggy back or curl up together in a pile somewhere like he'd found the Wei triplets one night when he couldn't sleep.

"Come in," Mako says when she opens the door to her quarters, and Raleigh follows her inside. He realizes he's never seen her room. It's neat, organized, and there are a few pictures on the walls. It's got the stark look of every base Raleigh's ever been on, but it also feels like Mako. It makes him relax, and he puts the bag of tech on the floor and watches as Mako crouches down to sort through it.

"Why'd he give it to us, you think?" He asks.

Mako doesn't answer right away. She's sorting parts and attaching wires. After a minute, she hands Raleigh a headpiece, fully together, and starts on the second one. "Because we're the only ones who want it."

Raleigh pauses in adjusting the lay of the headpiece. He watches Mako pull the connecting box from the bag and set it on the ground between them. "You don't think Newt and Hermann want to use it anymore?"

"I think Newt does," Mako says, and Raleigh laughs.

Mako stands up, her headpiece in one hand, and walks over to her bed. She pulls off her comforter and her pillows, reaches into a small cupboard and pulls out two more blankets. Raleigh steps forward to help, careful not to pull the wires from his headpiece. They make a nest just big enough for the two of them, pillows on the bottom, blankets piled around them, leaning against the frame of Mako's bed. She pulls the connector box to them as Raleigh tries to find a comfortable position. He ends up with one arm wrapped around Mako's waist, his head tucked against her shoulder, and her legs thrown over his.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Yes," Mako says, and he feels her press her cheek to his hair as she wraps one of her arms around the curve of his head. "Close your eyes," she says, and Raleigh does. The hum of the connector box is the last thing he hears before he's in the drift.

There's the usual rush of memories, fragments like the surf hitting a rock, and then it's just the two of them, in a large room, colored in the patterns of Gipsy Danger. Mako is walking along the tiles on her toes, stepping from square to square without touching the edges. She is as Raleigh always pictures her before he falls asleep: dressed in the clothes she wore when they sparred, mouth painted a deep purple by the lipstick he's only seen once. 

She turns and smiles and leaps for him, and he reaches out and catches her in one arm, his left arm, and it doesn't hurt. "I want to meet your family," he says. "If you don't mind."

She cups the sides of his face and presses their foreheads together. "I'd like that," she says.

The room spins, and they spin with it, and then there are people. Mama and Father and no siblings but two aunts and three uncles and seven cousins and a Grandmother and a Grandfather, and they smile and laugh and they tickle Mako as a child and lift her up in the air, and she plays hide and seek and tag and soldiers with her cousins, and then there is a gray space that feels exactly like Mako's memory of the Kaiju attack, and then there is Pentacost and there is Mako, and she is wearing a light blue dress and a dark blue coat, but she is taller, but she is still holding her shoe. Except it’s a different shoe, something black with a heel, but the memory feels very close to the one Raleigh’s seen before.

"I am always much younger when I remember it happening," she tells Raleigh. She is holding his hand and curled up against his side, and he is holding her and smiling at the way her younger self screws up her face in defiance at something Pentacost has said. "I was thirteen," his Mako continues. "But I felt like a child when it happened because all I was was scared and alone."

Younger Mako and Pentacost are sitting down to dinner. Pentacost is asking about Mako's day, and she pulls out a jar full of fluid and spiny tentacles. "A gift from Newt," Mako tells Raleigh. "I wasn’t allowed back in the lab for a week."

"And?" Raleigh asks.

"I sneaked in, but I made sure not to bring anything home with me." Mako steps away from him and up to Pentacost, who is now standing and reading a book, Younger Mako curled up in a ratty old chair and sneaking glances at him from behind her own book.

"This is realizing he is my father," Mako says. "I had just turned fifteen, and he had taken me out to dinner and invited everyone I liked in the Dome, and this is the day after that, when we were spending time together, and I looked up to say something and almost called him 'Father.'"

Raleigh steps forward to look at younger Mako, who is now staring hard at her book but clearly not reading it. He feels like he could reach out and touch her and feel every bit of confusion and love and hope and fear that is running across her face. "Why were you scared?"

"I thought thinking of him as my father would make me forget the rest of my family," Mako says. She is smiling at Pentacost as he turns a page in his book. There's sadness on her face, and Raleigh walks over and reaches for her hand.

"Did you ever call him father?"

"No, but I know he knew I felt it because I know I felt like a daughter to him." Mako leans against Raleigh as the memory softens and fades. "A commanding officer can find many uses for vengeance. A father does not want his child to ever live by its rules."

Raleigh cups Mako's face and presses their foreheads together, and when Mako stands on her toes, he bends down enough so they can kiss. They haven't kissed before, but it feels right to do it in the drift the first time. "Thank you," Raleigh says against her mouth.

"I want to meet your family," Mako says, her hands knotted in his shirt, keeping him close as they slide towards Raleigh's part of the drift.

"It was mostly just me and Yancy," Raleigh says as they walk through the playground where he went to school. He sees himself, six years old and climbing the support for the tire swing. Watching from the ground is Yancy, eight years old and cheering him on.   
"Our parents died when we were really young. Car accident. Our aunt and uncle took us in, and they took care of us and everything, but Yancy and me, we were just always in each other’s' pockets more than anywhere else."

Younger Raleigh is at the top of the tire swing support, crossing a beam with his arms out.

"I wanted to be an acrobat, then," Raleigh says. "Or a daredevil."

"Why did you become a pilot?" Mako asks; she is watching Yancy as he begins to climb. 

"We saw the Kaiju attacks on TV, and we wanted to be in the jaegers." Raleigh shrugs, feeling a little silly. "We didn't really have anyone to avenge or anything. We just liked the tech and the idea of fighting things."

Mako giggles. She's still watching Yancy, who's slipped a few inches on his climb up and is now being taunted by Younger Raleigh. "You wanted to be together," she says. 

"Yeah," Raleigh agrees. "Our aunt and uncle were good people, but I think...I always felt like it really was just me and Yancy, you know? Not really us against the world, but us facing the world."

Younger Raleigh is holding out his hand to Yancy, who is reaching up for it. They clasp, wrist-to-wrist, and Raleigh pulls him up to the beam where he's sitting.

"You were very happy," Mako says. 

Raleigh clears his throat, the tightness that's welled up not easing when he does so. "He..." he shakes his head and closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, it's him and Yancy at a Shatterdome, playing poker with other pilots, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder their backs against the wall. "This is the last thing we did before we went to bed the night before it happened. Before he died." 

Mako pulls him close and holds him tight at the waist as they watch Younger Raleigh and Yancy laugh and harass their tablemates and brag over who has the most kills. 

"I haven't thought about this in a long time," Raleigh says. "The only memories I could ever see were when--when he died."

They stand and watch the scene so long it loops back to the start. Raleigh can’t look away as it plays through again. "Let's go," Mako says as the third loop starts, and she reaches up, fingertips just brushing Raleigh's hair.

They fall out of the drift in a quick, dizzy rush. When Raleigh's vision clears, he sees Mako putting the headpieces outside their little nest. She turns and smiles, and he opens his arms without thinking, and she climbs into his lap without hesitation, her knees going on either side of his hips. She runs her fingers through his hair, and he tilts his head back to look at her.

"I love you," Mako says. She kisses the tip of his nose.

"I love you," Raleigh replies. He kisses her collarbone. She giggles and twists, trying to duck her chin enough to block him from doing it again. "Ticklish?" he asks, and then he's laughing and squirming himself as she gets her fingers under his armpits. 

"No more than you," she says, and when she stops, he looks up at her, and she's smiling wide, and Raleigh can't help but smile in return.

"Will you have dinner with me?" he asks. "After we're finished here. Can I take you to a restaurant and sit across from you and tell you everything about you I like?"

She blushes and ducks her head so her hair brushes against his cheeks. "Yes," she says. "But only if I can do the same."

"I'd love to hear all the reasons you like yourself," Raleigh says, and then he's collapsing on the floor because she's tickling him again, and she's got him pinned so he can't get up, and even with the sadness that's still around them, Raleigh feels absolutely alive down to his marrow.

"I love you!" he shouts between giggles.

Mako stops tickling and leans down so they're nose-to-nose. "You're supposed to say 'uncle,'" she says. "But I'll allow it this time."

They kiss again, warm and soft and affecting in a way that's different from in the Drift. In a way that feels more connected, which doesn't make any sense, but Raleigh figures they don't need a whole lot of sense in this moment. They just need each other.

*

Three days later, the Shatterdome is completely closed. Raleigh and Mako and Hermann and Newt stand and watch it get locked for the very last time. Hercules had taken Max and left the day before, unwilling to see the last place he saw his son be taken from him forever. Raleigh can understand that. He thinks the others can, too.

"Well, that's depressing," Newt says, and he yelps when Hermann digs an elbow into his side. "I mean, it's good because we won and stuff, but I really liked that place." The look he slides Hermann would be hilarious, Raleigh thinks, if he wasn't certain he wore the same one when he looked at Mako sometimes.

"We should go," Hermann says, huffing and turning, walking away before anyone can say anything else.

"We'll call!" Newt promises, giving Raleigh and Mako each a quick hug before jogging to catch up with Hermann. Raleigh and Mako watch them go, watch Newt kiss Hermann on the cheek. Watch Hermann push him away but still keep hold of his sleeve so he can pull him back where he wants him.

"I don't know if we did a better job saving the world or each other," Raleigh says.

"We did them equally well," Mako replies, and she takes his hand and leads him away so they can go have dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> Mako's age at the time of the attack where she met Pentacost is taken from the novelization. I have not read the novelization, so if Raleigh's backstory does not jive, that is why.


End file.
